Celebrating Earth Day

Zooniverse team members based at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium celebrated Earth Day this weekend at Earthfest, a two-day-long celebration of the planet we call home.

Visitors to the Adler Planetarium participate in a Zooniverse hands-on activity during Earthfest

In addition to many activities for all ages throughout the museum, museum visitors were able to speak with Zooniverse team members to learn about the many earth-related projects available online and on the app. Visitors could also participate in a real-life version of Floating Forests, in which they used tracing paper to illustrate areas of kelp forests on a satellite image. The activity demonstrated how Zooniverse researchers use aggregation to combine many classifications into one very accurate result. Stay tuned for the results of those tracings, coming soon!

Zooniverse team members also had some help from our friends at the Field Museum, who stopped by to talk about Microplants, a Zooniverse project studying some of the earliest land plants in the liverwort genus Frullania.

We love speaking with museum visitors and sharing the excitement of participating in real citizen science projects. If you’re in the Chicago area and missed us last weekend, keep an eye out for more information about the Adler Planetarium’s spring Members’ Night, when we’ll have even more fun Zooniverse-related activities for you!